LINCOLN 

THE  GREATEST  MAN  OF 
THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO..  LIMITED 

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THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  Lm 

TORONTO 


LINCOLN 

THE  GREATEST  MAN  OF 
THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


BY 

CHARLES   REYNOLDS   BROWN 

DEAN   OF  THE    DIVINITY    SCHOOL,    YALE    UNIVERSITY 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1922 

All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED   IN  THE  UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 


COPYRIGHT,  1922, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  printed.     Published  February,  1922, 


, 

kl 


Press  oi 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


LINCOLN 

THE  GREATEST  MAN  OF  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


YOU  may  possibly  be  interested  in 
knowing  how  this  study  of  a  great 
man's  life  originally  came  about. 
When  the  new  century  was  ushered  in  the 
event  was  celebrated  in  San  Francisco 
at  a  large  banquet  for  men  at  the  Mer 
chants'  Club.  The  Committee  of  Ar 
rangements  provided  four  addresses  on 
"The  Achievements  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century."  Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan, 
President  of  Stanford  University,  was 
asked  to  speak  on  "The  Greatest  Scien 
tific  Discovery  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury."  He  very  naturally  named  "The 
Principle  of  Organic  Evolution"  and  de- 
5 

464733 


6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

voted  -his  address  to  indicating  the  bear- 
;ihg  -.of  :tKat  'principle  upon  scientific 
thought  during  the  closing  decades  of  the 
century.  Professor  Charles  M.  Gay  ley, 
the  head  of  the  English  Department  in 
the  University  of  California,  was  asked  to 
speak  on  "The  Greatest  Book  of  the  Nine 
teenth  Century."  He  at  once  excluded  all 
scientific  works  as  not  belonging  to  pure 
literature.  After  discussing  the  merits  of 
various  authors  he  named  Goethe's 
"Faust"  as  the  greatest  literary  produc 
tion  of  the  hundred  years.  Mr.  Fairfax 
H.  Whelan,  a  business  man  in  San  Fran 
cisco,  was  asked  to  speak  on  "The  Great 
est  Mechanical  Invention  of  the  Nine 
teenth  Century."  He  surprised  us  all — 
and  no  one  knew  in  advance  what  choice 
any  one  of  the  four  speakers  had  made. 
We  expected  something  of  an  electrical 
nature,  but  he  named  "Bessemer  Steel," 
the  cheaper  process  of  converting  pig  iron 
into  steel,  on  the  ground  of  its  wider  util- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  7 

ity.  He  maintained  that  the  greatest  in 
vention  was  the  one  which  served  the  in 
terests  of  the  largest  number  of  people.  I 
was  asked  to  speak  that  evening  on  "The 
Greatest  Man  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury";  and  the  after-dinner  speech  that 
night  has  by  that  same  process  of  "organic 
evolution"  gradually  shaped  itself  into  the 
longer  address  contained  in  this  little 
book. 

It  might  seem  a  futile  task  to  seek 
to  name  the  greatest  man  in  any  century. 
It  is  not  easy  to  compare  one  great  man 
with  another.  And  "Comparisons  are 
odorous,"  Dogberry  said.  His  English 
was  a  trifle  lame,  but  he  had  a  show  of 
facts  on  his  side.  Those  earnest  debates 
which  we  used  to  have  thirty  or  forty 
years  ago  in  the  country  lyceums  as  to 
which  was  the  greater  man,  Columbus 
who  discovered  this  country  or  Washing 
ton  who  fathered  it,  did  not  really  get  us 
anywhere.  They  gave  the  young  budding 


8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

orators  a  chance  to  get  on  their  legs  and 
try  their  powers,  but  the  purpose  of  the 
discussion  was  defeated  by  the  difficulty 
of  reducing  the  various  fractions  of  the 
total  human  achievement  to  a  common  de 
nominator  so  that  they  might  be  com 
pared.  It  is  not  easy  to  compare  a  great 
military  commander  with  a  man  who  is 
great  in  literature;  or  a  great  statesman 
with  a  great  scientist.  Yet  straight  in  the 
face  of  all  of  these  difficulties  I  am  un 
dertaking  to  name  to  you  the  greatest 
man  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  to 
justify  my  choice,  if  I  may,  at  the  bar  of 
your  own  judgment. 

We  live  in  an  age  of  analysis  and  com 
parison.  The  heavens  declared  the  glory 
of  God  to  our  remote  ancestors  who  knew 
very  little  about  them  except  that  they 
were  beautiful.  In  these  days  we  have 
learned  to  map  out  the  paths  the  planets 
take.  We  know  how  to  weigh  accurately 
their  huge  bulk.  We  can  measure  the  dis- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  9 

tances  of  those  heavenly  bodies  from  us 
and  from  each  other.  By  our  spectrum 
analysis  we  can  even  determine  the  very 
fuel  they  burn.  And  because  of  this  more 
competent  knowledge  which  we  possess 
the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  to  us 
yet  more  effectively.  In  like  manner  our 
appreciation  of  human  excellence  is 
heightened  by  the  application  of  analysis 
and  comparison  to  the  essential  elements 
in  personal  greatness. 

In  entering  upon  this  discussion  I  would 
offer  these  considerations  as  furnishing  us 
a  valid  principle  of  selection.  We  may 
say  that  a  great  man  is  a  man  who  makes 
some  significant  period  of  history  different 
from  what  it  would  have  been  apparently 
but  for  his  influence.  Then  when  we 
come  to  measure  the  size  of  that  section  of 
history,  the  value  of  the  interests  involved 
and  the  permanence  of  the  work  accom 
plished,  we  may  readily  determine  the  de 
gree  of  his  greatness.  If  in  all  those  three 


io  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

regards  he  stands  higher  than  any  other 
man  of  his  time,  he  may  justly  be  re 
garded  as  the  greatest  man  of  the  period. 
Now  we  find  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury  a  certain  historic  event  which  in  my 
judgment  was  the  most  significant  and 
influential  occurrence  of  the  hundred 
years.  I  refer  to  the  Civil  War  fought 
out  here  in  our  own  land  in  1861-65.  You 
may  measure  that  war  any  way  you 
please — by  the  extent  and  value  of  the 
territory  at  stake;  or  by  the  number  of 
men  in  the  field,  exceeding  that  of  any 
modern  war  until  the  recent  Great  War 
in  Europe;  or  by  the  conscientiousness 
and  enlightenment  of  the  opposing  hosts 
—it  was  a  war  fought  not  by  paid  mer 
cenaries,  but  by  citizens  who  knew  why 
they  were  there  and  for  what  they  were 
fighting;  or  by  the  far-reach  of  the  prin 
ciples  involved  in  their  bearing  upon  the 
fate  of  a  great  nation  threatened  with  dis 
ruption,  upon  the  interest  of  human  free- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  n 

dom  and  upon  the  cause  of  democracy 
touching  as  it  does  the  development  of 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  race — you  may 
measure  that  war  any  way  you  please  and 
I  believe  you  will  regard  it  as  the  most 
significant  occurrence  of  the  century. 

Now,  in  bringing  the  various  issues  in 
that  war  to  a  successful  conclusion — in 
freeing  four  millions  of  our  fellow-beings 
from  slavery;  in  preserving  a  government 
which  stands  perhaps  as  the  nearest  ap 
proach  to  a  successful  democracy  on  a 
large  scale  thus  far  in  history;  and  in 
closing  the  debate  upon  certain  questions 
which  had  troubled  this  Republic  for  dec 
ades  and  now  trouble  it  no  more — in 
bringing  those  issues  to  a  conclusion  many 
great  men  wrought  together  and  the  credit 
for  the  outcome  does  not  belong  solely  to 
any  one  man  of  the  group. 

It  was  a  gigantic  task  to  bring  a  free, 
prosperous  and  resolute  people,  intelli 
gently  and  conscientiously  divided  in  their 


12  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

political  judgment,  to  submit  to  the  will 
of  the  majority  as  expressed  on  the  field 
of  battle  and  then  to  go  on  together.  To 
go  on  in  what  has  proved  to  be  not  slum 
bering  hatred  nor  smoldering  rebellion, 
but  in  actual,  growing,  joyous  unity — it 
was  a  gigantic  task!  Seward  and  Chase 
and  Stanton  did  their  appointed  work 
and  they  did  it  well.  Grant  and  Sherman 
and  Farragut  accomplished  their  terrible 
task  with  thoroughness.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  William  Lloyd  Garrison  and 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  to  each  one  of 
these  belongs  a  place  of  honor!  And  to 
a  great  unnumbered  host  of  plain  men 
and  women  who  fought  and  thought,  who 
gave  and  prayed  for  the  Union,  to  each 
one  of  these  our  gratitude  is  due!  But 
to  one  man  more  than  all  the  rest  belongs 
the  highest  place  in  that  struggle  and  I 
named  him  that  night  as  the  greatest  man 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  first  mar 
tyred  President,  Abraham  Lincoln. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  13 

Now  I  hope  that  this  choice  did  not 
proceed  simply  from  the  fact  that  I  am 
an  American  myself  and  love  my  own 
country  and  its  people  as  I  could  love 
no  other.  And  I  feel  that  I  am  a  good 
deal  of  an  American.  My  family  has 
been  here  a  long  time.  My  ancestors 
landed  at  Jamestown,  Virginia,  in  1607. 
They  had  their  trunks  all  unpacked  and 
their  household  arrangements  all  in  good 
running  order  when  those  Pilgrim  Fathers 
finally  got  around  in  1620.  We  were 
glad  to  see  them  when  they  came.  They 
were  good  people  and  were  destined  to 
make  an  important  contribution  to  the  life 
of  the  Nation.  But  we  were  here  first. 
And  we  have  not  been  moving  away 
nor  dying  out.  I  do  not  know  how 
it  may  be  with  other  family  stocks, 
but  I  feel  thoroughly  sure  that  when 
Gabriel  blows  his  trumpet,  in  every 
telephone  book  and  city  directory  from 
Eastport,  Maine,  to  San  Diego,  Califor- 


14  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

nia,  there  will  still  be  pages  and  pages  of 
"Browns." 

I  feel,  therefore,  that  because  I  belong 
to  a  large  family  and  to  a  family  which 
has  been  here  a  long  time,  I  am  a  good 
deal  of  an  American.  But  nothing 
splendidly  human  is  ever  foreign  to  any 
lover  of  his  race.  I  have  tried  to 
study  the  work  of  great  men  in  other 
lands. 

I  hope  the  choice  of  Lincoln  did  not 
spring  simply  from  the  fact  that  he 
wrought  with  certain  issues  which  interest 
my  own  mind  and  heart  more  than  other 
issues  might.  I  have  tried  to  study  the 
work  of  great  men  in  other  fields  of  en 
deavor.  From  that  excursion  into  other 
lands  and  other  lines  of  effort  I  came  back 
all  the  more  firmly  persuaded  that  the 
highest  place  of  honor  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  belongs  to  that  President  of  the 
United  States. 

The  very  title  was  his  in  a  distinctive 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  15 

way.  No  man  before  his  time  had  ever 
been  "President  of  the  United  States"  in 
the  sense  that  Lincoln  was,  nor  has  any 
man  been  since.  "United  States"  they 
were  up  to  1860!  "United  States"  they 
were  in  his  determined  and  insistent  mind 
during  all  those  troubled  years  of  '61-5, 
for  he  maintained  that  the  Southern  States 
had4not  gone  out  of  the  Union  and  that 
they  could  not  by  any  act  of  theirs  go  out. 
And  "United  States"  they  are  to-day, 
thanks  to  him  and  to  those  who  wrought 
with  him — "United"  as  we  trust  for  all 
time !  He  was,  in  a  very  distinctive  way, 
President  of  the  United  States. 

Now,  before  I  enter  upon  the  discussion 
of  what  I  regard  as  the  four  main  ele 
ments  in  Lincoln's  greatness,  it  may  be 
profitable  to  recall  some  of  the  difficulties 
which  confronted  him  at  the  beginning  of 
his  administration.  In  my  judgment  no 
President  from  the  immortal  Washington 
down  to  Woodrow  Wilson  has  ever  been 


16  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

confronted  by  a  crisis  more  grave.  Take 
into  consideration  these  six  important 
facts! 

1.  He  found  an  empty  treasury,  the 
public  credit  sadly  impaired  by  the  seces 
sion  of  eleven  prosperous  States,  and  he 
had  upon  his  hands  one  of  the  costliest 
wars  of  modern  times  to  be  fought  through 
and  paid  for  in  honest  money. 

2.  He  found  himself  at  the  head  of  an 
inexperienced    party.     The    Republican 
Party  or  the  Whig  Party  had  been  out  of 
power.    The  Democratic  Party  had  been 
in  control  of  the  National  Government. 
It  is  one  thing  to  stand  off  and  criticize 
and  find  fault  with  the  manner  in  which 
some  other  party  or  some  other  man  is 
doing  a  certain  thing.    Almost  anyone  can 
criticize  the  other  fellow,  whether  the  per 
formance  is  making  a  speech,  or  running 
a  newspaper,  or  poking  the  fire.    But  to 
get  in  and  do  the  thing  better  than  the 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  17 

other  man  was  doing  it  is  quite  another 
matter.  The  Republican  Party  suddenly 
found  itself  taken  out  of  the  attitude  of 
opposition  and  criticism  to  be  placed  in 
the  responsible  control  of  the  National 
Government  at  a  great  crisis  in  our  his 
tory.  And  it  was  for  the  most  part  with 
out  experience. 

3.  Lincoln  found  himself  supported  or 
burdened,  according  to  one's  point  of 
view,  by  a  set  of  counselors  in  his  Cab 
inet  who  were  all  suspicious  of  his  ability. 
His  Secretaries  felt  at  the  outset  that  Lin 
coln  did  not  know  enough  to  be  President 
of  the  United  States.  They  said  that  he 
was  "a  raw  western  man"  who  had  come 
East.  They  insisted  that  his  manners 
were  awkward  and  that  his  clothes  did  not 
fit  him.  They  maintained  that  he  told 
too  many  stories  and  cracked  too  many 
jokes  for  a  man  in  public  life.  And  they 
were  all  profoundly  sure  at  the  start  that 
he  would  be  humbly  grateful  to  them  if 


i8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

they  would  only  tell  him  what  to  do.  If 
Lincoln  had  not  been  so  genuinely  great 
he  would  have  been  advised  to  death  in 
the  first  year  of  his  administration. 

4.  He  found  the  public  opinion  of 
Europe  on  the  whole  unfriendly  to  the 
North.  The  European  bankers  were  hesi 
tating  over  our  bonds  and  the  European 
governments,  many  of  them,  were  on  the 
very  edge  of  acknowledging  the  Southern 
Confederacy  as  a  sovereign  nation.  There 
seemed  to  be  an  ill-disguised  feeling  of 
satisfaction  over  what  they  regarded  as 
"the  collapse  of  the  American  experiment 
in  popular  government."  Even  in  Eng 
land,  our  long-time  friend,  up  to  the  day 
when  Henry  Ward  Beecher  went  abroad 
to  give  his  great  addresses  in  Manchester 
and  Birmingham,  in  Liverpool  and  Lon 
don,  the  general  feeling  was  more  friendly 
to  the  South  than  to  the  North.  The  Eng 
lish  aristocracy  sympathized  with  the  aris 
tocrats  of  the  South.  The  cotton  opera- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  19 

tives  in  Manchester  were  angry  because 
the  supply  of  raw  cotton  had  been  cut 
off  by  our  blockading  the  southern  ports. 
The  prevailing  temper  of  Europe  was  hos 
tile  to  the  Union. 

5.  He  found  here  at  the  North  a  pow 
erful,  influential  section  of  the  people  who 
were  thoroughly  despondent.    They  were 
tired  of  the  debate  and  the  struggle  over 
slavery  and  states'  rights.    They  said,  "If 
those  southern  states  do  not  want  to  stay 
in  the  Union,  let  them  take  their  slaves 
and  go  out,  rather  than  fight  about  it.    Let 
us  have  peace."    The  confusion  and  dis 
couragement  in  the  northern  mind  was  a 
serious  obstacle  in  Lincoln's  pathway. 

6.  He  found  a  powerful,  resolute  sec 
tion  of  the  Union  up  in  armed   revolt 
against   the    government   which   he   had 
sworn  to  protect  and  to  preserve. 

Now,  take  those  six  facts  together— 
the    empty    treasury,    the    inexperienced 


20  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

party,  the  distrustful  cabinet,  the  un 
friendliness  in  Europe,  the  despondency 
in  the  North,  and  the  armed  rebellion  at 
the  South — they  present  a  combination  of 
difficulties  sufficiently  grave  to  test  the 
title  to  greatness  of  any  man  who  might 
be  called  upon  to  meet  them. 

Now,  with  those  facts  clearly  in  mind, 
let  me  name  what  I  would  regard  as  the 
four  main  elements  in  Lincoln's  great 
ness. 

First,  his  combination  of  lofty  idealism 
with  practical  sagacity  in  bringing  things 
to  pass.  He  had  his  ideals.  They  hung 
in  his  sky  as  definite  and  as  illuminating 
as  the  visions  of  a  seer.  The  abolition 
of  slavery,  the  preservation  of  the  Union, 
the  healing  of  the  breach  between  the 
North  and  the  South,  the  welfare  of  the 
entire  American  people!  Toward  those 
ideals  he  steadfastly  set  his  face.  But  he 
was  always  a  concrete  rather  than  an  ab 
stract  idealist.  He  had  a  way  of  seeing 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  21 

what  ought  to  be  and  of  seeing  how  it 
could  be.  Then  he  showed  himself  able 
to  get  in  and  do  it.  This  combination 
of  lofty  idealism  which  gave  him  the  moral 
passion  of  a  saint  or  a  reformer,  together 
with  the  well-seasoned  sagacity  of  a  prac 
ticed  diplomat,  made  him  a  statesman  of 
the  first  order. 

He  was  a  great  man  and  he  was  a  good 
man.  If  we  were  starting  out  to  canonize 
some  of  our  American  Protestant  saints 
I  should  be  in  favor  of  beginning  with 
Abraham  Lincoln.  But  his  goodness  was 
always  of  the  homely,  useful  type.  It  was 
not  the  abstract,  doctrinaire,  John  the 
Baptist  sort  of  goodness  which  demands 
for  its  exercise  that  it  be  taken  off  into 
the  desert  to  live  on  locusts  and  wild 
honey  without  wife  or  child,  without  citi 
zenship  or  business  connection  or  any  of 
the  normal  relationships  of  life.  Like  the 
Son  of  Man,  Abraham  Lincoln  "came  eat 
ing  and  drinking."  He  came  building  his 


22  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

high  ideals  into  an  every-day  order  of 
plain  fact. 

He  was  just  as  desirous  as  Emerson 
ever  was  of  hitching  his  wagon  to  a  star. 
His  Gettysburg  Address  and  his  Second 
Inaugural,  classics  they  are  in  political  ut 
terance,  show  that  he  could  hitch  his 
wagon  nowhere  else  than  to  the  highest 
star  in  sight.  But  he  was  always  willing 
to  have  all  four  wheels  of  the  wagon  on 
the  ground.  He  was  ready  to  get  down 
and  grease  the  axles  so  that  his  own  par 
ticular  wagon-load  of  effort  might  run 
with  the  least  possible  friction.  He  was 
there  encouraging  the  team  by  such  home 
ly  words  of  cheer  as  made  him  one  of  the 
plainest  of  men.  He  was,  throughout  his 
illustrious  career,  a  concrete  idealist. 

He  was  accustomed  to  say  to  his  cab 
inet,  "The  question,  gentlemen,  is  not, 
'Can  anyone  imagine  anything  better  than 
this?'  I  have  no  doubt  but  that  any  one 
of  you  can.  The  question  before  us  is, 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  23 

'Can  we  do  anything  better  at  this  time?' ' 
The  ideal,  as  he  saw  it,  must  be  a  prac 
ticable,  a  feasible  ideal.  He  was  never 
disposed  to  sit  down  and  cry  for  the  moon. 
He  wrought  in  the  spirit  of  his  own 
century's  greatest  poet.  You  will  remem 
ber  how  Browning  puts  it: 

"The    common    problem,    yours,    mine, 

everyone's, 

Is  not  to  fancy  what  were  fair  in  life 
Provided  it  could  be,  but  finding  first  what 

may  be 
Then  find  how  to  make  that  fair,  up  to 


This  quality  of  genius,  not  dwelling 
apart  in  the  isolation  of  seeing  visions  and 
of  dreaming  dreams,  but  engaged  steadily 
in  the  accomplishment  of  certain  useful 
ends,  seems  to  me  to  rank  Lincoln  above 
all  such  men  as  Darwin,  Spencer,  Emer 
son,  Goethe.  These  men  were  free  to  go 


24  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

into  their  studies  or  their  laboratories 
or  into  the  fields  to  think  and  observe,  to 
study  and  to  write  as  they  chose.  There 
was  no  hurry.  The  "Origin  of  Species" 
did  not  have  to  be  issued  by  a  certain  day. 
The  fine  chapters  in  "The  Conduct  of 
Life,"  or  the  noblest  passages  of  "Faust," 
were  not  suddenly  called  out  by  a  hostile, 
insistent  line  of  bayonets. 

But  upon  Lincoln  during  all  the  years 
of  his  public  career  there  rested  the  pres 
sure  of  the  necessity  for  the  immediate 
accomplishment  of  certain  definite  ends. 
The  war  must  be  carried  along,  with 
money,  millions  of  it,  and  with  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  men.  The  men  and  the 
money  must  be  forthcoming  without  de 
lay.  The  men  had  to  be  fed,  clothed, 
armed,  transported,  and  made  effective  in 
the  field.  The  public  opinion  of  Europe 
must  either  be  changed  or  held  back  un 
til  we  had  settled  our  difficulties  here  at 
home.  The  public  opinion  of  this  coun- 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  25 

try,  flickering  like  a  candle  in  the  wind, 
now  blazing  up  into  some  promise  of  use 
fulness  and  now  threatening  to  go  out  all 
together,  must  be  fed  and  sustained  and 
thus  made  equal  to  the  terrible  demands 
which  were  being  made  upon  it. 

Now  to  meet  successfully  a  situation 
like  that  would  seem  to  be  a  harder  task 
than  to  write  a  book,  or  to  announce  an 
idea,  or  to  sing  a  song.  And  the  com 
bination  of  administrative  with  intellec 
tual  ability  in  Lincoln  may  well  serve  to 
give  him  a  higher  place  in  the  world's 
esteem  than  that  held  by  any  of  the  great 
men  whose  names  I  have  mentioned 
above. 

I  referred  in  passing  to  the  difficulties 
confronting  him  at  the  beginning  of  his 
administration.  It  is  enough  to  say,  in 
a  word,  that  he  met  and  mastered  them 
all.  He  did  it  not  by  a  few  shrewd  ex 
ploits  which  would  put  the  enemy  of  our 
country's  peace  in  a  hole,  only  to  come 


26  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

out  again  all  the  more  determined  because 
of  that  temporary  check  in  his  plans.  He 
did  it  by  years  of  patient,  far-seeing 
statesmanlike  effort  which  laid  the  foun 
dation  for  converting  the  enemy  of  our 
country's  peace  into  an  abiding  and  an 
essential  friend. 

Before  Lincoln  died  he  had  the  joy  of 
seeing  the  slaves  all  freed  by  his  Emanci 
pation  Proclamation.  He  saw  the  Union 
preserved  without  the  loss  of  a  single 
state.  He  saw  the  armed  rebellion  brought 
practically  to  an  end.  He  saw  the  great 
volunteer  armies  of  Grant  and  Sherman 
ready  to  be  mustered  out  and  to  be  re 
turned  to  their  homes  and  to  peaceful 
industry.  And  he  must  have  known  that 
to  this  magnificent  result  he,  more  than 
any  other  one  man,  had  contributed. 

It  had  told  tremendously  upon  his 
strength;  body,  brain  and  heart  had  all 
been  taxed  to  the  utmost.  If  we  were  to 
measure  his  term  in  the  White  House,  not 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  27 

by  the  lapse  of  days,  but  by  the  con 
sumption  of  vitality,  it  would  be  drawn 
out  into  a  considerable  portion  of  the  al 
lotted  three  score  years  and  ten.  And  I 
feel  confident  that  I  am  correct  in  assert 
ing  that  the  assassin's  bullet  only  antici 
pated  an  event  which  would  not  have  been 
long  postponed  when  once  the  reaction 
from  the  terrible  stress  of  war  times  had 
set  in. 

And  if  Lincoln  could  have  looked  ahead 
and  could  have  foreseen  the  speedy  end 
of  his  career,  he  might  have  said,  as  did 
the  prophet  of  old,  "It  is  enough!  Now 
let  thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  for  mine 
eyes  have  seen  the  salvation  of  my  people 
Israel."  His  great  ideals  had  all  become 
accomplished  facts.  I  would  name,  there 
fore,  as  the  first  element  in  his  greatness 
the  combination  of  lofty  idealism  with 
practical  sagacityin  bringing  things  to  pass. 

The    second   element    I   would    name 


28  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

would  be  his  power  of  comprehending  men 
of  extreme  views.  It  was  Frederick  W. 
Robertson  who  used  to  maintain  that  the 
truth,  as  a  rule,  does  not  lie  with  either 
extreme.  Nor  does  it  lie  (as  many  soft 
hearted  and  soft-headed  people  like  to 
think)  with  the  golden  mean,  the  half 
way  position,  the  compromise  which 
misses  the  strength  of  both  extremes.  The 
truth,  Robertson  maintained,  lies  rather 
in  the  recognition  of  certain  deeper  un 
derlying  principles  which  make  possible 
the  strength  of  both  the  extremes. 

Now  in  that  quality  of  insight  Abraham 
Lincoln  was  a  past  master.  He  had  come 
into  prominence  chiefly  by  his  anti-slavery 
speeches  in  the  Douglas  debates.  He  had 
been  elected  to  the  Presidency  by  the 
votes  of  tens  of  thousands  of  men  who 
knew  very  little  about  him,  except  that 
he  was  a  man  who  hated  slavery.  But 
the  moment  he  was  elected  he  refused  to 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  29 

be  regarded  as  the  advance  agent  or  the 
general  manager  of  the  abolition  move 
ment.  He  refused  to  wear  the  tag  of  any 
section  or  of  any  party  or  of  any  par 
ticular  school  of  political  opinion.  He 
insisted  that  now  he  was  President  of  the 
whole  United  States,  North  and  South, 
loyal  and  rebellious,  bond  and  free.  He 
was  their  President  and  he  was  there  to 
serve  their  interests  as  best  he  might. 

He  was  roundly  scolded  for  taking  this 
broad  view  of  the  matter  by  the  extrem 
ists  of  both  types.  Wendell  Phillips,  a 
finished  Harvard  scholar,  a  polished  Bos 
ton  gentleman,  a  wonderful  orator — in 
my  judgment  almost  the  finest  we  have 
produced  in  this  land — but  a  man  sin 
gularly  defective  in  good  judgment, 
scolded  away  at  Lincoln  in  most  abusive 
fashion.  He  called  him  "a  mere  huck 
ster  in  politics."  He  called  him  "the 
slave-hound  from  Illinois"  because  in  the 


30  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

early  years  of  his  administration  Lincoln 
allowed  fugitive  slaves  to  be  returned  to 
their  masters  in  the  border  states. 

And  Horace  Greeley,  an  earnest,  warm 
hearted,  forcible,  blundering  man  up  to 
the  day  of  his  death,  scolded  away  at  Lin 
coln  in  the  columns  of  the  New  York 
Tribune,  making  that  paper  a  great  hin 
drance  when  it  could  have  been  a  mighty 
help.  The  New  York  Tribune  at  that 
time  was  the  political  Four  Gospels,  and 
Acts,  and  Epistles  all  bound  into  one,  for 
a  great  many  people  here  at  the  North. 
The  old  farmer  out  here  at  the  Four  Cor 
ners  did  not  know  exactly  what  he  did 
think  about  things  until  he  got  his  " weekly 
Trybune"  as  he  called  it,  and  sat  down 
to  read  what  Horace  Greeley  had  to  say 
about  it  all. 

Lincoln  listened  to  them  all  and  was 
unmoved  by  them  all.  He  also  had  the 
abolition  of  slavery  a  good  deal  at  heart, 
but  he  also  had  a  responsibility  which 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  31 

those  gentleman  did  not  share,  and  which 
they  were  not  always  able  to  see.  He 
had  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  in  his 
heart  a  long,  long  time  before  his  wise 
head  approved  its  issuance  or  before  his 
right  hand  wrote  it  out  in  firm  lines.  He 
knew  that  its  hour  had  not  yet  come  and 
so  he  calmly  waited  for  the  fullness  of 
time. 

Away  over  at  the  other  extreme  in  those 
days  were  the  War  Democrats  and  other 
men  of  their  way  of  thinking.  They  be 
lieved  in  the  Union,  but  they  had  no 
money  to  spend  and  no  blood  to  spill  in 
freeing  slaves.  They  insisted  that  Lincoln 
was  saying  altogether  too  much  about 
abolition  and  was  moving  altogether  too 
fast  in  that  direction.  Their  scolding  was 
ofttimes  only  second  to  that  of  the  extreme 
abolitionists  like  Wendell  Phillips  and 
Horace  Greeley. 

It  is  rather  trying  to  human  flesh  to  be 
censured  at  one  and  the  same  time  for 


32  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

being  "ultra"  and  "radical,"  and  for  be 
ing  "lukewarm"  and  "hesitating."  It  is 
as  confusing  as  the  conduct  of  those  peo 
ple  in  the  New  Testament  of  whom  it  is 
said,  "We  piped  unto  you  and  ye  did  not 
dance.  We  wailed  unto  you  and  ye  did 
not  mourn."  It  required  a  good  deal  of 
insight  in  those  days  to  know  what  kind 
of  music  would  bring  all  the  loyal  people 
of  this  country  into  line.  It  stands  to  the 
undying  credit  of  Abraham  Lincoln  that 
he  knew.  He  comprehended  men  of  ex 
treme  views  and  in  the  end  was  able  to 
draw  them  together  and  utilize  them  by 
keeping  to  the  front  the  deeper  underlying 
principles. 

He  knew  that  the  underlying  principle 
in  that  great  struggle  was  the  preserva 
tion  of  the  Union,  the  maintenance  of  the 
integrity  of  our  country.  He  was  accus 
tomed  to  say,  "If  I  could  save  the  Union 
by  freeing  all  of  the  slaves,  I  would  do 
that.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  33 

freeing  any  of  the  slaves,  I  would  do  that. 
If  I  could  save  the  Union  by  freeing  part 
of  the  slaves  and  leaving  the  rest  alone,  I 
would  do  that.  What  I  do,  I  do  because 
I  believe  it  serves  the  cause  of  the  Union. 
And  what  I  leave  undone,  I  leave  undone 
because  I  believe  that  serves  the  cause  of 
the  Union." 

He  knew  full  well  that  the  Union  would 
not  "continue  to  exist  half -slave  and  half- 
free."  But  he  knew  also  that  the  only 
principle  upon  which  he  could  draw  to 
gether  those  men  of  extreme  views  was  the 
preservation  of  the  Union,  the  mainte 
nance  of  the  integrity  of  our  common 
country. 

There  are  people  in  every  community 
who  can  see  the  flies  on  a  barn  door  with 
out  ever  seeing  the  barn  door.  Certain 
lively,  buzzing  details  out  in  the  fpre- 
ground  take  up  their  entire  attention  and 
they  miss  the  main  fact.  Lincoln  could 
always  see  the  barn  door!  He  could  see 


34  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  main  fact  in  any  situation !  He  could 
recognize  the  deeper  underlying  principles 
which  were  at  stake  and  when  he  saw 
them  he  anchored  to  them. 

The  wisdom  of  his  course  is  perfectly 
apparent  to  us  now.  It  began  to  be  ap 
parent  in  the  later  years  of  the  Civil  War. 
In  the  Republican  Convention  of  1864, 
which  renominated  Lincoln,  they  very 
shrewdly  put  in  as  temporary  Chairman, 
Mr.  Robert  C.  Breckinridge,  of  Kentucky. 
He  was  a  Southerner.  He  was  an  orator 
of  the  old  school.  He  was  an  aristocrat 
and  his  social  affiliations  were  almost  en 
tirely  with  the  slaveholders.  But  he  be 
lieved  in  the  Union  and  because  of  that 
faith  he  was  there  at  that  Convention. 

On  taking  the  Chair  he  said,  "  Gen  tie- 
men  of  the  Convention,  as  a  Whig  Party, 
or  a  Republican  Party,  or  an  Abolition 
Party,  or  an  American  Party,  I  would  not 
go  with  you  one  step.  But  as  a  Union 
Party,  I  will  go  with  you,  if  need  be,  to 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  35 

the  ends  of  the  earth  or  to  the  gates  of 
death."  And  he  represented  a  very  con 
siderable  element  in  this  country  at  that 
time  who  were  ready  to  go  all  lengths  in 
the  preservation  of  the  Union. 

Lincoln  labored  steadily  to  keep  before 
the  minds  of  the  people  the  idea  that  the 
Southern  States  had  not  in  any  sense  sev 
ered  their  connection  with  the  Union. 
General  McClellan  reported  to  him  on  one 
occasion  that  in  blocking  the  way  so  that 
the  army  of  Northern  Virginia  could  not 
make  any  aggressive  effort  at  that  time 
he  had,  "made  safe  Pennsylvania  and 
Maryland  and  all  our  soil."  General 
Meade,  after  the  victory  at  Gettysburg, 
delayed  action  and  allowed  Lee  to  get 
back  safely  across  the  Potomac.  He  then 
telegraphed  to  the  President  that  at  least 
"he  had  driven  the  invader  from  our  soil." 

"Our  soil! "  exclaimed  Lincoln.  "When 
will  our  Generals  ever  get  that  idea  out  of 
their  heads!  The  whole  country  is  our 


36  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

soil."  His  great  main  interest  was  in  keep 
ing  to  the  front  that  fundamental  prin 
ciple  in  the  struggle  which  was  being  made 
to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the  Nation. 

There  was  another  political  convention 
held  that  same  year  in  Cleveland,  Ohio. 
It  was  made  up  of  those  who  desired  to 
nominate  some  northern  man  who  would 
be  able  to  defeat  Lincoln  at  the  polls.  It 
was  a  mixed  assemblage.  The  John  C. 
Fremont  men  were  all  there.  The  Peace- 
at-any-price  Party  was  well  represented. 
The  German  radicals  from  St.  Louis,  un 
der  the  leadership  of  B.  Gratz  Brown, 
were  on  hand.  The  Convention  made  a 
great  deal  of  noise  and  the  Democratic 
papers  of  the  time  affected  to  treat  it  with 
the  utmost  seriousness  and  dignity. 

The  delegates  had  a  great  deal  to  say 
about  "the  tyrant  Lincoln."  They  de 
nounced  him  for  his  unconstitutional  acts. 
They  adopted  a  good  many  strenuous 
resolutions.  During  the  Convention  this 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  37 

resolution  was  introduced, — "Resolved, 
That  we  insist  upon  putting  down  the  Re 
bellion  at  once."  One  pious  delegate 
moved  to  amend  it  by  inserting  these 
words,  "with  God's  assistance."  This, 
however,  was  voted  down  with  boisterous 
demonstrations  of  disapproval.  They 
wanted  no  help  from  any  quarter  whatso 
ever.  Then,  after  having  denounced  Lin 
coln  repeatedly  for  being  unconstitutional, 
they  proceeded  to  nominate  for  President 
John  C.  Fremont  and  for  Vice-President 
a  man  who  came  from  the  same  state,  ap 
parently  forgetting  that  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  expressly  prohibits 
the  electors  of  any  state  from  casting  their 
votes  for  a  President  and  a  Vice-Presi 
dent,  both  of  whom  shall  come  from  the 
same  state  as  themselves.  Then  having 
done  this  unconstitutional  thing  they  ad 
journed. 

The  people  saw  at  once  the  futility  of  it 
all.    Fremont  had  the  good  sense  to  with- 


38  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

draw  his  name.  And  very  speedily  the 
whole  force  of  the  opposition  there  ex 
pressed  faded  out.  But  if  Lincoln  had 
allowed  himself  to  be  side-tracked  by 
some  minor  issue;  if  he  had  anchored  to 
anything  less  than  the  great  main  fact  in 
that  heart-breaking  struggle,  his  first  four 
years  in  the  White  House  might  have  re 
sulted  in  failure.  He  might  not  have  been 
renominated  or  reflected  in  1864.  And 
the  whole  history  of  our  country  for  the 
last  fifty  years  might  have  been  a  story 
of  tragic  disappointment. 

His  political  sagacity  had  in  it  the  qual 
ity  of  the  X-ray.  He  could  see  all  the 
way  in  and  all  the  way  through,  and  all 
the  way  down.  Deep  underneath  the  ruf 
fling  and  the  millinery  which  rested  upon 
the  surface  of  society  in  those  days;  deep 
within  the  warm  throbbing  flesh  of  popu 
lar  feeling,  he  saw  the  solid  backbone,  the 
skeleton  of  political  principle  which  alone 
would  hold  the  Republic  upright.  And 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  39 

with  that  he  cast  in  his  lot.  I  would  name, 
therefore,  as  the  second  element  in  his 
greatness  his  power  of  comprehending  and 
in  the  end  of  utilizing  men  of  extreme 
views  by  keeping  to  the  front  the  deeper 
underlying  principles. 

The  third  element  I  would  name  would 
be  his  ability  to  keep  close  to  the  hearts 
of  the  people  in  sympathetic  fashion  and 
yet  lead  them  steadily  in  those  lines  of  ac 
tion  which  he  desired  them  to  take.  It 
was  James  Russell  Lowell,  in  his  essay  on 
Lincoln,  who  said  that  there  was  "a  cer 
tain  tone  of  familiar  dignity,  a  kind  of 
fireside  plainness"  about  the  man  not  only 
in  his  conversation  and  in  his  speeches  but 
even  in  his  state  papers.  He  did  not  have 
the  air  of  a  man  who  was  laying  down  the 
law  to  the  country.  He  showed,  rather, 
the  attitude  of  one  who  was  taking  the 
whole  country  into  his  confidence  and 
talking  matters  over  with  it  as  one  neigh- 


40  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

bor  might  discuss  the  questions  of  the  day 
over  the  back  fence  with  his  neighbor. 
His  word  was  ever  "Come,  now,  let  us 
reason  together  about  this  matter." 

He  respected  the  people  too  much  to 
bully  them.  He  respected  the  people  too 
much  to  flatter  them.  There  was  in  him 
nothing  of  the  demagogue.  He  reasoned 
with  them  in  serious  fashion  and  in  con 
fident  expectation  that  the  same  considera 
tions  which  had  persuaded  his  mind  would 
persuade  theirs.  In  that  way  he  gathered 
to  himself  their  consent  and  approval. 
On  the  day  that  he  died  I  suppose  he  was 
the  most  absolute  ruler  in  Christendom. 
Never  a  Czar  of  all  the  Russias  had  such 
power  over  his  people  as  Abraham  Lin 
coln  had  over  the  loyal  people  of  this 
land. 

Now  that  is  leadership  of  the  highest 
type.  The  finest  quality  of  leadership, 
whether  it  be  in  ward  politics,  or  in  a 
Woman's  Club,  or  in  a  baseball  nine,  is 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  41 

not  the  leadership  which  goes  about  fussy 
and  bossy  insisting  constantly  on  having 
its  own  way.  It  is  the  leadership  which 
offers  its  suggestions  and  policies  so  quiet 
ly,  unobtrusively,  and  winsomely  that  the 
people  accept  them  and  act  upon  them 
without  realizing  that  they  are  being  led. 
They  see  the  whole  matter  so  clearly  that 
they  feel  as  if  they  were  merely  following 
the  wise  dictates  of  their  own  judgment. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  a  great  leader 
of  men,  but  he  depended  for  his  power  of 
leadership  upon  his  personal  magnetism, 
upon  the  brute  strength  of  his  own  dom 
inant  will,  and  upon  a  rapid  succession  of 
victories.  When  the  victories  ceased,  his 
power  of  leadership  was  gone.  Lincoln 
knew  that  in  a  democracy  public  senti 
ment  would  rule.  He  knew  also  that  pub 
lic  sentiment  to  be  reliable  must  be  in 
formed  and  persuaded.  He,  therefore, 
proceeded  in  that  cautious,  sure-footed 
way  which  was  characteristic  of  him.  He 


42  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

was  like  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  of 
fire  by  night.  He  was  never  in  such  a 
hurry  as  to  run  off  and  get  out  of  sight 
of  his  Israelites.  He  did  not,  on  the  other 
hand,  allow  them  to  lag  back.  He  kept 
himself  in  sympathetic  relations  with  the 
people,  but  kept  them  moving  steadily 
toward  the  goal  he  had  in  view. 

The  influence  of  this  habit  of  mind  had 
even  penetrated  the  South.  The  fact  that 
Lincoln  was  not  the  agent  of  any  par 
ticular  party  or  section,  but  the  President 
of  the  whole  United  States,  had  come  to 
be  felt  all  over  the  land.  A  certain  appre 
ciation  of  his  justice,  fairness,  wisdom  and 
mercy  had  begun  to  weaken  the  morale  of 
General  Lee's  army  long  before  it  reached 
Appomattox. 

In  the  Fall  of  1864  the  southern  sol 
diers  in  the  trenches  around  Richmond 
and  Petersburg  heard  cheering  over  in  the 
northern  lines.  They  knew  what  the 
Union  soldiers  were  cheering  about — they 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  43 

knew  that  they  were  cheering  over  the  re 
election  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  And  they 
knew  also  that  this  meant  the  speedy 
downfall  of  the  Confederacy.  The  lead 
ers  were  still  defiant  but  the  common  peo 
ple  were  making  ready  to  give  up  the  un 
profitable  struggle.  Their  mood  was  re 
flected  in  the  price  of  Confederate  money. 
During  the  war  it  had  taken  thirty-five 
dollars  of  Confederate  paper  to  purchase 
a  dollar  in  gold.  After  the  reelection  of 
Lincoln  it  took  fifty,  then  sixty,  then  sev 
enty,  and  then  nobody  wanted  it.  This 
registered  the  sober  judgment  of  the  busi 
ness  men  of  the  South  as  to  the  effect  of 
the  reelection  of  Lincoln  upon  the  fate  of 
the  Confederacy. 

His  leadership  was  much  less  showy 
and  dramatic  than  the  movements  of  Na 
poleon,  but  wherever  Lincoln  went  he  took 
the  country  with  him.  When  he  died  the 
soul  of  the  movement  to  which  he  had 
given  his  life  went  marching  on.  It  had 


44  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

already  become  incarnate  in  that  whole 
body  of  political  sentiment  and  conviction 
which  now  ruled  the  North. 

His  successful  maintenance  of  this  sym 
pathetic  touch  with  the  people  was  due, 
in  large  measure,  to  these  three  qualities: 
His  integrity,  high  and  holy  enough  for 
all  its  tasks,  yet  sufficiently  simple  to  walk 
upon  the  ground!  His  common  sense! 
We  call  it  "common,"  I  do  not  know  why; 
it  is  anything  but  common.  I  mean  the 
plain  straightforward  way  of  looking  at 
things  and  of  saying  things.  When  Lin 
coln  talked,  the  people  knew  exactly  what 
he  was  driving  at.  They  did  not  have  to 
have  an  English  translation  of  it.  He 
never  used  those  long  words  which  would 
not  go  into  a  suitcase  without  being  folded 
twice.  He  used  the  short,  terse,  expres 
sive  words  of  the  King  James  Bible  and 
of  Shakespeare,  the  two  volumes  which  he 
read  most.  He  was  a  man  of  great  com 
mon  sense.  And  in  the  third  place,  his 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  45 

sense  of  humor,  of  which  he  had  a 
very  abundant  store!  It  sometimes  be 
came  a  source  of  irritation  to  serious- 
minded  men  like  Seward  and  Stanton  in 
the  stress  of  war  times.  It  was  one  of  the 
ways  in  which  Lincoln  sought  a  momen 
tary  relief  from  the  severe  mental  strain 
of  his  high  office. 

There  is  something  about  the  psy 
chology  of  an  average  American  which 
warms  up  to  a  combination  like  that. 
Give  a  man  integrity,  common  sense,  and 
a  sense  of  humor,  and  he  has  in  him  the 
main  essentials  necessary  for  leadership. 

This  combination  enabled  Lincoln  to 
put  things  in  a  terse,  meaty,  sententious 
way  which  the  common  people  would  hear 
gladly  and  carry  away  readily  in  their 
minds.  I  will  venture  to  recall  a  few  strik 
ing  instances  of  this  quality  of  mind. 

During  the  years  preceding  the  Civil 
War  much  was  said  about  "the  natural 
inferiority  of  the  colored  race."  The  peo- 


46  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

pie  were  also  sensitive  about  the  idea  of 
"negro  equality"  and  the  possibility  of 
intermarriage  between  the  negroes  and 
the  whites.  A  very  common  way  to  chal 
lenge  the  position  of  an  abolitionist  in 
New  England  was  to  say  to  him,  "How 
would  you  like  to  have  a  negro  woman  for 
your  wife?  How  would  you  like  to  have 
a  negro  marry  your  daughter?"  In  the 
famous  Illinois  debates  Stephen  A.  Doug 
las  had  harped  upon  the  natural  and  per 
manent  inferiority  of  the  colored  race. 

At  one  of  their  meetings  Lincoln  replied 
to  these  arguments  against  abolition  in 
these  words:  "I  agree  with  my  friend 
Judge  Douglas  that  the  negro  is  not  in  all 
respects  my  equal — certainly  not  in  color 
and  perhaps  not  at  this  time  in  intellec 
tual  or  in  moral  endowment.  But  in  his 
right  to  eat  the  bread  which  his  own 
right  hand  earns  without  asking  the  leave 
of  any  other  man,  he  is  my  equal  and  the 
equal  of  Judge  Douglas  and  the  equal  of 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  47 

every  living  man.  As  to  intermarriage, 
I  do  not  understand  that  because  I  do  not 
want  a  negro  woman  for  a  slave,  I  must 
necessarily  want  her  for  a  wife.  My  un 
derstanding  is  that  I  can  just  let  her  alone. 
And  I  have  no  fears  that  I  or  that  any  of 
my  friends  would  marry  negro  women 
even  though  there  was  no  law  to  prevent 
it.  But  as  Judge  Douglas  and  his  friends 
seem  to  have  apprehensions  that  they 
might,  I  give  him  my  word  that  I  will 
stand  to  the  last  by  the  law  of  the  State 
of  Illinois  which  forbids  the  marriage  of 
blacks  and  whites."  These  words  were 
widely  quoted  in  the  North  and  after  that 
we  did  not  hear  so  much  about  the  nat 
ural  inferiority  of  the  colored  race,  or 
about  the  possible  social  consequences  of 
abolition. 

The  same  quality  of  mind  appeared  in 
his  treatment  of  the  Mason  and  Slidell 
Affair.  You  will  remember  that  Mason 
and  Slidell,  two  Southern  gentlemen  on 


48  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

their  way  to  Europe,  were  forcibly  taken 
from  the  British  ship  Trent  by  one  of 
our  northern  cruisers.  Great  Britain  in 
sisted  that  her  rights  as  a  neutral  had  been 
invaded  and  demanded  that  the  men 
should  be  given  up.  This  was  done  and 
it  was  altogether  right.  But  the  people 
were  sensitive  and  many  felt  that  Great 
Britain  had  taken  advantage  of  our  un 
happy  civil  strife  to  inflict  upon  this  coun 
try  an  open  insult. 

When  Lincoln  came  to  a  certain 
Cabinet  meeting  he  found  his  Secretaries 
angrily  discussing  the  incident.  They 
were  in  a  mood  to  make  an  immediate  de 
mand  upon  Great  Britain  for  reparation 
or  at  least  for  an  apology.  If  this  should 
not  be  forthcoming,  they  insisted  that  war 
should  be  declared  upon  England  at  once. 
Lincoln  listened  to  the  discussion  for  a 
time  and  then  remarked  quietly,  "Gentle 
men,  doesn't  it  seem  to  you  that  one  war 
at  a  time  is  enough?"  One  war  at  a  time! 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  49 

This  was  the  headline  in  all  the  morning 
papers  at  the  North  next  day  and  it  did 
more  to  cool  the  country  off  and  to  bring 
it  to  its  senses  than  a  state  document  as 
long  as  the  book  of  Jeremiah  would  have 
done.  The  people  decided  that  "one  war 
at  a  time"  was  quite  enough — and  that 
was  the  last  of  that  incident. 

The  President  used  great  tact  through 
out  in  keeping  the  border  states,  Mary 
land,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  in  the 
Union.  Their  sympathies,  in  large  part, 
were  with  the  South,  but  it  was  much 
easier  to  bring  the  struggle  to  a  success 
ful  conclusion  with  those  three  states  in 
the  Union  than  it  would  have  been  had 
they  joined  the  Confederacy.  Now  and 
then  their  slaves  ran  off  and  the  question 
of  returning  or  of  not  returning  fugitive 
slaves  to  their  masters  held  tremendous 
possibilities  of  trouble.  Lincoln  once  re 
plied  to  an  angry  inquiry,  touching  some 
fugitive  slaves  who  had  escaped  across  the 


50  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

border,  in  these  homely  words:  "You  peo 
ple  are  slowly  finding  out  that  two-legged 
property  is  a  very  poor  sort  of  property 
to  own." 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war  the  in 
activity  of  General  McClellan  became  a 
thorn  in  the  flesh  for  all  zealous  Northern 
ers.  He  was  in  command  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac.  He  was  a  splendid  drill 
master,  a  fine  disciplinarian.  He  took 
good  care  of  his  men  and  improved  the 
morale  of  the  army  from  month  to  month. 
But  he  was  forever  calling  for  "more 
troops"  and  was  not  doing  anything  ag 
gressive.  "All  quiet  on  the  Potomac" — 
this  was  the  report  which  came  back 
and  kept  on  coming  back,  until  the  peo 
ple  were  thoroughly  sick  of  it.  It  was  not 
"quiet  on  the  Potomac"  which  they  de 
sired.  They  had  sent  their  husbands  and 
their  sons,  their  brothers  and  their  lovers 
to  the  front  and  they  desired  to  hear  about 
some  decisive  action  against  the  army  of 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  51 

General  Robert  E.  Lee  in  northern  Vir 
ginia. 

The  patience  of  Lincoln  was  finally  ex 
hausted — and  I  suppose  since  the  time 
of  Job  he  might  be  written  down  as  the 
most  patient  man  in  history.  He  sent 
out  in  very  informal  fashion  this  mes 
sage  to  General  McClellan:  "If  General 
McClellan  is  not  going  to  use  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac  for  a  while,  I  would  like 
to  borrow  it  for  a  day  or  two  and  see 
what  I  could  do  with  it."  This  was  not 
exactly  a  plan  of  campaign  or  an  official 
order  from  the  Commander-in-chief  of  the 
Northern  Forces,  but  it  was  a  very  sug 
gestive  message,  very  stimulating.  And 
from  that  time  on  General  McClellan 
found  it  in  his  heart  to  do  something  more 
aggressive  against  the  army  of  Lee. 

I  will  only  relate  one  more — I  have 
never  seen  this  story  in  print.  I  would 
not  undertake  to  say  that  it  has  not  ap 
peared  in  some  form,  because  so  many 


52  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Lincoln  stories  are  printed  every  year 
during  the  month  of  February  in  the 
newspapers  and  in  the  magazines  of  the 
country.  I  have  read  nearly  all  of  the 
"Lives  of  Lincoln"  which  have  appeared 
in  book  form  and  I  have  never  seen  this 
story  published. 

It  was  my  good  fortune  once  to  make 
a  long  sea-  voyage  on  the  same  vessel  with 
Mr.  Frederick  W.  Seward.  He  was  the 
son  of  William  H.  Seward,  our  Secretary 
of  State  during  the  Civil  War.  He  was 
acting  Secretary  of  State  during  his  fa 
ther's  illness.  One  day  in  the  Captain's 
room  Mr.  Frederick  Seward  related  to  a 
small  group  of  us  who  had  become  ac 
quainted  with  him  a  number  of  interesting 
stories  about  the  closing  months  of  Lin 
coln's  administration. 

There  was  a  certain  measure  in  which 
the  President  believed  strongly.  He 
brought  it  one  afternoon  into  a  Cabinet 
meeting.  He  found  that  his  Secretaries, 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  53 

to  the  last  man,  were  all  strongly  op 
posed  to  it.  He  spent  considerable  time 
explaining  it  and  seeking  to  bring  them  to 
his  way  of  thinking,  but  apparently  with 
out  much  effect.  The  time  came,  how 
ever,  when  a  vote  must  be  taken  as  other 
business  had  to  be  transacted.  Lincoln 
put  the  motion:  "All  those  in  favor  of  this 
measure  will  say,  Aye."  The  Secretaries 
sat  there  as  silent  and  as  well-behaved 
as  a  company  of  nuns  at  Vespers.  "All 
those  who  are  opposed  will  say,  No." 
Every  man  instantly  voted  a  stout,  loud, 
"No."  There  came  a  look  of  disappoint 
ment  in  the  President's  face  and  then  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye.  After  a  significant 
pause  he  remarked,  "The  Ayes  seem  to 
have  it.  The  motion  is  carried." 

The  very  audacity  of  the  man!  The 
undaunted  strength  of  his  own  conviction 
awed  them  rather  than  offended  them. 
They  looked  at  him,  leaned  back  in  their 
chairs  and  laughed  and  allowed  the  mo- 


54  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

tion  to  be  put  down  in  the  minutes  as  hav 
ing  been  "carried."  It  proved  to  be  a 
wise  measure  and  before  the  month  had 
passed  it  won  the  hearty  support  of  every 
man  in  the  Cabinet.  But  I  suppose  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  was  the  only  man  on  earth 
who  could  have  gotten  that  measure 
through  that  Cabinet  that  afternoon  as 
having  been  carried. 

He  knew  what  was  in  man  and  needed 
not  that  others  should  tell  him.  He  knew 
where  the  cords  of  the  human  heart  are 
and  how  he  could  play  upon  them  to  pro 
duce  the  music  he  desired  to  hear.  He 
knew  how  to  phrase  a  statement  in  such 
a  way  as  to  make  it  carry.  I  suppose 
outside  of  the  Scriptures  and  Shakespeare 
no  writer  or  speaker  has  ever  been  so 
widely  quoted  here  in  the  United  States 
as  Abraham  Lincoln. 

As  a  leader  of  men  he  moved  slowly, 
feeling  his  way  at  times  rather  than  rush 
ing  ahead  in  pellmell  fashion  after  the 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  55 

manner  of  ill-advised  reformers.  He  kept 
ahead  of  the  people,  but  not  too  far  ahead. 
His  method  at  this  point  has  been  finely 
indicated  by  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson: 

"Here  was  place  for  no  fair  weather 
sailor — the  new  pilot  was  called  to  the 
helm  in  a  tornado.  In  four  stormy  years 
his  endurance,  his  fertility  of  resource, 
his  magnanimity  were  sorely  tried  and 
never  found  wanting.  By  his  courage,  his 
justice,  his  even  temper,  his  fertile  coun 
sel,  his  humanity,  he  stood  a  heroic  figure 
in  the  center  of  a  heroic  epoch.  He  is  the 
true  history  of  the  American  people  in  his 
time.  Step  ^by  step  he  walked  before 
them,  slow  with  their  slowness,  quicken 
ing  his  march  by  theirs,  the  true  represen 
tative  of  this  continent,  an  entirely  public 
man,  the  father  of  his  country,  the  pulse 
of  twenty  millions  throbbing  in  his  heart, 
the  thought  of  their  minds  articulated  by 
his  tongue." 


56  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

It  requires  study  and  reflection  to  ap 
preciate  adequately  the  true  value  of  that 
type  of  leadership.  History  often  ap 
pears  simple  and  easy  to  those  who  read 
it  from  some  safe  distance.  We  can  see 
exactly  what  the  great  men  ought  to  have 
done  at  every  juncture  and  we  can  draw 
the  appropriate  moral.  I  fancy,  however, 
that  to  the  men  who  were  making  that  his 
tory  the  issues  were  not  always  so  clear. 
For  them  it  was  not  like  steering  one's 
boat  in  broad  daylight  through  a  well- 
charted  stream. 

We  can  turn  back  to-day  and  read  the 
history  of  the  Civil  War  with  great  peace 
of  mind.  Even  in  the  darkest  days  we 
know  that  Appomattox,  reconstruction 
and  a  reunited  country  are  just  ahead. 
We  can  come  out  into  the  open  at  any 
time  by  simply  turning  over  a  handful  of 
leaves.  But  to  Abraham  Lincoln,  who 
did  not  know  of  a  surety  that  Appomattox 
and  a  reunited  country  were  on  the  way, 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  57 

the  making  of  all  that  history  a  day  at  a 
time,  an  hour  at  a  time,  an  act  at  a  time, 
and  the  acceptance  of  the  full  responsi 
bility  for  his  course,  was  quite  another 
matter.  I  name,  therefore,  as  the  third 
element  in  his  greatness,  his  power  of 
holding  himself  close  to  the  hearts  of  the 
people,  whom  he  trusted  and  served, 
and  of  guiding  them  steadily  in  those 
lines  of  action  which  he  desired  them  to 
take. 

The  final  element  in  his  greatness  which 
I  would  name  was  his  political  unselfish 
ness  and  moral  integrity.  He  was  both 
great  and  good.  The  main  issues  with 
him  were  the  preservation  of  the  Union, 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  welfare  of  the 
whole  American  people,  rather  than  the 
success  or  the  fame  or  the  political  ad 
vancement  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  de 
sired  not  that  he  might  save  the  country 
but  that  the  country  might  be  saved,  let 


58  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  credit  for  the  achievement  go  where 
it  would. 

He  felt  the  full  sense  of  his  responsibil 
ity  in  that  tenure  of  office.  The  South 
had  said  in  1860,  "The  election  of  Lincoln 
means  secession."  When  Lincoln  became 
President  the  Southern  States,  according 
to  their  threat,  began  to  pass  their  Acts 
of  Secession.  Lincoln  must  have  asked 
himself:  "Am  I  to  end  the  line  of  Presi 
dents  of  the  United  States?  If  so,  what 
will  be  the  verdict  of  history  upon  me? 
Or,  on  trie  other  hand,  am  I  to  be  that 
pivotal  man  upon  whose  wisdom  and 
strength  may  turn  the  possibility  of  such 
a  Union  as  we  have  never  enjoyed  to  this 
hour?"  It  was  enough  to  make  any  man 
self-conscious  and  to  fill  him  with  an  un 
due  sense  of  his  own  importance. 

It  was  a  time  of  political  selfishness. 
Even  the  gravity  of  the  situation  did  not 
shame  the  petty  ambitions  of  smaller  men. 
When  we  take  up  the  account  of  some  of 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  59 

the  military  heartburnings  and  squabbles 
of  that  day  they  make  sorry  reading  for 
a  patriot.  There  were  men  who  seemed 
to  be  thinking  more  about  the  amount 
of  gold  on  their  shoulder  straps  than  of 
the  service  they  might  render  in  the  field, 
or  the  victories  they  might  win  for  the 
flag.  It  is  a  mood  which  has  not  entirely 
passed.  It  only  required  two  hours  to 
fight  the  Battle  of  Santiago  de  Cuba  in  our 
Spanish  War,  but  it  took  more  than  two 
years  to  settle  the  question  as  to  whom 
the  credit  should  be  given,  to  Sampson 
or  Schley.  And  the  question  has  not  been 
settled  yet  to  everybody's  satisfaction. 

It  was  not  only  in  military  and  in  naval 
life,  but  in  political  action  as  well,  that 
men  sometimes  betrayed  the  quality  of  sel 
fishness.  Seward,  Chase,  Stanton,  Gideon 
Welles,  and  almost  every  other  man  of  the 
period  seemed  at  times  to  have  his  own 
little  ax  to  grind  whenever  the  public 
grindstone  was  not  otherwise  engaged — 


60  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  sometimes,  alas,  when  it  was.  Among 
them  all  Lincoln  bore  himself  steadily  in 
the  spirit  of  absolute  disinterestedness. 

He  was  a  man  of  great  simplicity  and 
humility  of  mind.  When  some  Secretary 
would  resign  in  a  fit  of  resentment,  Lin 
coln  would  take  the  letter,  put  on  his  hat 
and  go  down  to  the  Secretary's  home, 
He  would  say  to  him  in  friendly  fashion: 
"The  public  interest  does  not  admit  of  my 
accepting  your  resignation  at  this  time.  I 
have  come  to  beg  you  to  retain  your  port 
folio." 

When  I  think  of  this  quality  of  his 
character  I  am  always  reminded  of  a 
certain  story.  It  is  a  story  which  I  enjoy 
all  the  more  because  it  was  told  originally 
by  a  brother  minister  whose  face  was  as 
black  as  my  Sunday  coat.  I  refer  to  the 
Rev.  John  Jasper,  who  for  many  years 
was  pastor  of  a  large  colored  Baptist 
Church  in  the  city  of  Richmond,  Vir 
ginia. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  61 

John  Jasper  had  not  enjoyed  many  edu 
cational  advantages  in  his  early  life,  but 
he  was  a  shrewd  negro.  He  saw  that  the 
colored  men  in  Richmond  were  being  used 
by  the  designing  politicians  in  their  own 
interests.  Before  the  election  the  candi 
dates  for  office  would  go  about  addressing 
their  "colored  constituents"  and  making 
all  manner  of  promises  as  to  what  would 
be  done  for  the  negro  race  if  only  these 
particular  gentlemen  were  chosen  to  office. 
But  when  they  were  once  safely  elected 
not  one  of  them  could  see  a  colored  man 
across  the  street. 

On  the  Sunday  night  before  the  city 
election,  Mr.  Jasper  preached  a  sermon 
on  the  political  outlook  and  in  the  course 
of  that  sermon  he  told  this  story: 

"Brethren,  the  other  night  I  had  a 
dream.  I  dreamed  that  I  was  dead.  I 
went  to  heaven,  but  I  found  it  a  long  way 
from  Richmond,  Virginia,  to  heaven.  I 
toiled  along  through  the  brush  and  the 


62  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

briers  and  over  the  rocks  until  at  last, 
through  much  tribulation,  I  reached  the 
Gate  of  Heaven. 

"I  knocked  and  St.  Peter  said,  'Who's 
theah?' 

"The  Rev.  John  Jasper,  Richmond, 
Virginia.7 

"  'Is  you  a-horseback  or  a-foot?' 

"  Tse  a-foot,  Sah.' 

"  'Then  you  cahn't  come  in  heah — no 
man  can  come  in  heah  except  he's  a'horse- 
back.'  " 

Mr.  Jasper  said  that  he  felt  profoundly 
disappointed.  He  had  been  striving  to 
live  a  consistent,  Christian  life  for  many 
years.  He  had  been  preaching  the  Gospel 
of  his  blessed  Lord  with  such  ability  as  he 
possessed  and  now  to  be  told  that  he  could 
not  be  admitted  to  heaven  because  he  had 
come  on  foot  seemed  harsh.  He  believed, 
however,  in  the  perseverance  of  the  saints 
and  he  started  back  to  earth  to  get  a 
horse  that  he  might  come  up  properly. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  63 

Again  he  toiled  along  through  the  brush 
and  the  briers  and  over  the  rocks  until, 
about  half  way  down  to  the  earth,  he  met 
General  Mahone. 

"Why,  Gineral,"  he  said,  "is  you  dead, 
too?  Whar  you  gwine?" 

The  General  informed  him  that  he  was 
on  the  way  to  heaven.  Then  John  Jasper 
explained  that  he  would  not  be  admitted 
because  he  was  on  foot.  The  two  men 
stood  there  on  the  path  discussing  the 
matter  until  presently  General  Mahone 
said:  "Now  John,  I'll  tell  you  what  we 
will  do.  You  get  down  on  your  hands 
and  knees  and  I'll  get  on  your  back.  Then 
I'll  ride  you  up  to  the  Gate  of  Heaven. 
When  St.  Peter  asks  me  if  I  am  on  horse 
back  or  on  foot,  I'll  tell  him  I  am  on 
horseback.  Then  I'll  ride  you  in  and 
there  we'll  be." 

This  seemed  like  an  admirable  arrange 
ment,  and  John  Jasper,  according  to  his 
dream,  meekly  got  down  on  his  hands  and 


64  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

knees  and  took  General  Mahone  on  his 
back.  Then  once  more  he  toiled  along 
through  the  brush  and  the  briers  and  over 
the  rocks  until  again  he  was  at  the  Gate 
of  Heaven. 

General  Mahone  knocked  and  St.  Peter 
said:  "Who's  there?" 

"General  Mahone,  Richmond,  Vir 
ginia." 

"Is  you  a-horseback  or  a-foot?" 

"I'se  a-horseback,  Sir." 

"All  right,  General,"  replied  St.  Peter, 
"hitch  your  horse  outside  and  walk  right 
in." 

I  do  not  need  to  make  the  application 
as  John  Jasper  made  it  that  night  to  his 
colored  congregation.  I  tell  the  story  as 
illustrating  a  quality  which  I  fear  has  not 
entirely  disappeared  from  some  of  our 
present-day  politicians.  There  are  still 
men  in  every  community  who  like  to  have 
the  public  get  down  on  all  fours  that  these 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  65 

aspirants  for  office  may  ride  them  for  their 
own  advantage. 

I  tell  this  story  as  illustrating  a  quality 
of  which  not  one  shred  can  be  found  in 
the  make-up  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  He 
had  no  desire  that  the  American  people 
should  get  down  on  all  fours  that  he  might 
ride  them  for  his  own  advantage.  He 
desired  rather  than  he  might  take  upon 
himself  the  form  of  a  servant  and  stoop 
down  in  patient  fashion  to  minister  to 
their  welfare.  He  lived  in  the  spirit  of 
that  Book  which  John  Hay,  his  Secretary, 
tells  us  lay  always  on  his  desk — a  book 
in  which  he  was  accustomed  to  read  every 
day.  The  Book  says:  "He  that  saveth  his 
life  shall  lose  it.  But  he  that  loseth  his 
life  for  my  sake  shall  find  it."  Lincoln 
found  himself;  he  found  his  place  in  the 
hearts  of  his  countrymen;  and  he  found 
his  secure  niche  in  the  Temple  of  Fame 
because  he  lived  and  died  to  serve.  He 


66  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

was  a  man  of  moral  integrity  and  of  sub 
lime  unselfishness. 

How  warm  were  his  sympathies  with 
the  suffering  and  how  delicately  he  could 
phrase  them  upon  occasion!  Read  this 
letter  written  to  Mrs.  Byxbee,  the  mother 
of  the  five  sons  who  had  given  their  lives 
to  the  cause  of  the  Union: 

"I  have  been  shown  in  the  files  of  the 
War  Department  a  statement  that  you 
are  the  mother  of  five  sons  who  have  died 
gloriously  on  the  field  of  battle.  I  feel 
how  weak  and  fruitless  must  be  any  words 
of  mine  which  should  attempt  to  beguile 
you  from  your  grief  for  a  loss  so  over 
whelming.  But  I  cannot  refrain  from  ten 
dering  to  you  the  consolation  which  may 
be  found  in  the  thanks  of  the  Republic 
they  died  to  save.  I  pray  that  our  Heav 
enly  Father  may  assuage  the  anguish  of 
your  bereavement  and  leave  you  only  the 
cherished  memory  of  the  loved  and  the 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  67 

lost,  and  the  solemn  pride  that  must  be 
yours  to  have  laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice 
upon  the  altar  of  freedom." 

How  deeply  religious  the  man  was  in 
all  the  essential  attitudes  of  his  spirit! 
His  closing  words  in  the  Second  Inaugural 
might,  in  their  sweep  and  finish,  in  their 
moral  tone  and  their  spiritual  insight, 
have  come  from  one  of  the  greatest  of 
the  old  Hebrew  prophets. 

" Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we 
pray,  that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may 
speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God  wills  that 
it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by 
the  bondsmen's  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk, 
and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  with 
the  lash  shall  be  paid  with  another  drawn 
by  the  sword,  as  was  said  three  thousand 
years  ago,  so  still  it  must  be  said,  'the 
judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and  righte 
ous  altogether.' 


68  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"With  malice  toward  none,  with  charity 
for  all,  with  firmness  in  the  right  as  God 
gives  us  to  see  the  right — let  us  strive  on 
to  finish  the  work  we  are  in;  to  bind  up 
the  nation's  wounds;  to  care  for  him  who 
shall  have  borne  the  battle  and  for  his 
widow  and  his  orphan;  to  do  all  which 
may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting 
peace  among  ourselves,  and  with  all « na 
tions." 

In  discussing  these  elements  of  Lin 
coln's  greatness  I  have  not  paused  at  each 
point  to  make  comparison  between  him 
and  the  other  great  men  of  that  period. 
He  would  easily  bear  comparison  with  the 
greatest  men  of  the  century.  Napoleon 
was  a  great  man  and  a  large  part  of  his 
life  came  in  the  Nineteenth  Century.  But 
the  growing  verdict  upon  him  is  that  he 
was  selfish,  cruel,  and  in  his  domestic  re 
lations  absolutely  heartless.  Lincoln  was 
as  i  tender-hear  ted  as  a  woman.  Goethe 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  69 

was  a  great  writer, — I  believe  the  greatest 
writer  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, — but 
his  private  life  was  not  clean.  His  warm 
est  admirers  are  compelled  to  i  apologize 
for  certain  phases  of  his  conduct  and  char 
acter.  Lincoln's  life  was  clean — the 
American  people  will  never  have  to  blush 
for  Abraham  Lincoln.  Darwin  and  Spen 
cer  were  great  men,  but  great  chiefly  be 
cause  of  their  association  with  a  certain 
idea,  the  idea  of  organic  evolution  which 
was  about  to  be  announced  by  another 
investigator,  Wallace.  The  greatness  lay 
in  the  idea  rather  than  in  the  personali 
ties  of  these  two  men.  Somehow  .Lincoln 
combined  the  intellectual,  <  the  administra 
tive,  and  the  moral  in  such  a  degree  that 
nowhere  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  do  I 
Jind  any  other  man  so  truly  great. 

His  combination  of  lofty  idealism  with 
practical  sagacity  in  bringing  things  to 
pass;  his  ability  to  comprehend  and  in 
the  end  to  utilize  men  of  extreme  views 


70  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

by  keeping  to  the  front  the  deeper  under 
lying  principles  and  the  main  issues;  his 
power  of  holding  himself  close  to  the 
hearts  of  the  people  in  sympathetic  fash 
ion  and  yet  of  guiding  them  steadily  and 
wisely  in  those  lines  of  action  he  desired 
them  to  take;  his  political  unselfishness 
and  moral  integrity — he  invested  these 
fine  qualities  in  a  momentous  period  of 
our  nation's  history  and  in  the  light  of 
what  he  was  and  of  what  he  did  I  am  led 
to  ascribe  to  him  more  of  personal  great 
ness  and  of  abiding  usefulness  than  be 
longs  to  any  other  man  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century. 

In  this  discussion  I  have  tried  to  free 
my  mind  altogether  from  any  partisan 
feeling  or  sectional  prejudice 'or  personal 
bias.  I  ought  to  be  able  to  do  this  very 
readily.  I  come  from  the  other  side  of 
Mason  and  Dixon's  'line — I  was  born  in 
the  old  state  of  Virginia.  My  father  be-* 
lieved  in  the  Union,  but  his  father,  my 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  71 

grandfather,  sympathized  fully  with  the 
slaveholders  and  believed  in  the  principles 
of  the  Confederacy  as  long  as  he  lived. 
Some  of  my  earliest  recollections  as  a 
child  are  of  seeing  that  aged  grandfather 
as  he  sat  reading  Pollard's  "Lost  Cause," 
one  of  the  favorite  Southern  histories  of 
the  Confederacy  in  that  day.  I  have  seen 
the  tears  stream  down  his  cheeks  over 
what  had  been  to  him  the  greatest  disap 
pointment  of  his  life,  the  failure  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy.  I  remember  how 
there  hung  in  his  bedroom  up  to  the  day 
of  his  death  that  picture  which  is  so  well 
known  throughout  the  South,  the  picture 
of  General  Robert  E.  Lee  at  the  grave  of 
"Stonewall"  Jackson. 

It  was  into  that  family  and  into  the 
midst  of  those  sentiments  and  traditions 
that  I  was  born.  In  the  family  gather 
ings  during  my  childhood  I  heard  the 
events  of  recent  history  discussed  from 
a  point  of  view  far  removed  from  that 


72  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

held  by  anyone  who  may  read  this  book. 
But  when  I  became  old  enough  to  read 
history  for  myself  and  to  think  and  to 
compare,  I  came  gradually  to  believe  that 
the  greatest  man  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury,  and  one  of  the  greatest  men  in  all 
the  centuries,  was  that  same  Abraham 
Lincoln  who  defeated  the  desires  of  my 
Southern  ancestors  and  kept  all  our  stars 
together  in  one  common  field  of  blue. 

The  great  humanity  of  the  man!  How 
it  has  touched  the  heart  of  the  whole 
world,  North,  South,  East,  and  West!  I 
have  given  this  address  in  Tennessee, 
meeting  with  the  same  response  there  that 
I  have  enjoyed  in  Massachusetts,  in  Iowa, 
or  in  California.  The  great  humanity  of 
the  man  had  begun  to  touch  the  heart  of 
the  whole  world  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
In  those  strange  sad  days  of  April,  1865, 
wherever  men  had  learned  to  read,  the 
feeling  was  that  the  human  race  had  lost 'a 
friend. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  73 

Queen  Victoria,  departing  from  the 
stately  etiquette  of  her  English  Court, 
wrote  out  with  her  own  right  hand  a  mes 
sage  of  condolence  to  Mrs.  Lincoln:  "As 
a  widow  to  a  widow,  I  write,"  she  said, 
thinking  of  her  own  bereavement  in  the 
death  of  the  good  Prince  Albert.  This 
was  the  feeling  at  one  end  of  the  social 
scale.  And  away  down  at  the  other  end 
there  grew  up  among  some  of  the  sim 
ple,  untutored,  superstitious  people  who 
lived  in  a  certain  community  not  far  from 
Springfield,  Illinois,  this  tradition  which 
persisted  for  decades — they  said  that  the 
brown  thrushes  in  the  hedges  out  there 
did  not  sing  for  a  whole  year  after  Lin 
coln  was  shot.  The  great  humanity  of  the 
man  was  touching  the  heart  of  the  whole 
world. 

Now  in  closing  may  I  suggest  a  certain 
parallel!  I  do  it  with  the  utmost  rever 
ence,  and  I  trust,  without  the  slightest 
offense  to  the  religious  sentiments  of  any- 


74  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

one  who  may  read  these  lines.  I  am  not 
instituting  a  comparison,  but  I  would  sug 
gest  a  certain  parallel  between  the  life  of 
the  greatest  man  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury  and  the  life  of  the  Greatest  of  all 
the  Centuries,  the  Son  of  Man. 

Both  were  of  humble  birth.  God  makes 
his  great  ones  from  the  dust  of  the  ground, 
breathing  into  their  nostrils  the  breath  of 
his  own  mighty  life  as  they  become  living 
souls. 

Lincoln's  birthplace  was  a  log  cabin 
and  Jesus  was  born  in  the  manger  of  a 
stable. 

Lincoln's  father  was  a  carpenter  by 
trade  and  Jesus  is  referred  to  in  the  Gos 
pels  as  "the  son  of  the  carpenter." 

The  words  which  Jesus  used  in  his 
opening  address  there  in  the  synagogue 
at  Nazareth  might  have  been  incorporated 
bodily  into  Lincoln's  First  Inaugural. 
"The  spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me  be 
cause  He  has  anointed  me  to  preach  good 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  75 

tidings  to  the  poor.  He  has  sent  me  to 
bind  up  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  de 
liverance  to  the  captives,  and  to  set  at 
liberty  them  that  are  bruised." 

Both  Lincoln  and  Jesus  were  lovers  and 
users  of  the  story,  the  parable,  the  homely 
saying  which  the  common  people  would 
hear  gladly  and  readily  carry  away  in 
their  minds. 

Both  Lincoln  and  Jesus  were  hindered 
in  their  work  by  the  moral  extremists  and 
bigots  on  the  one  hand  and  by  the  moral 
dullards  and  slow  of  heart  to  believe  the 
good  things  God  had  in  store  for  the  peo 
ple,  on  the  other. 

Of  Lincoln's  personal  appearance  it 
might  have  been  said  as  it  was  said  of 
the  promised  Messiah:  "There  is  no  form 
nor  comeliness  in  him  that  we  should  de 
sire  him." 

The  characteristic  gravity  of  Lincoln's 
face  and  the  sadness  which  sat  upon  him 
almost  overpoweringly  during  his  years  in 


76  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  White  House,  how  it  reminds  us  inces 
santly  of  the  One  who  was  called  "A  Man 
of  Sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief." 

And  to  complete  that  significant  paral 
lel,  you  will  all  remember  that  it  was  on 
Good  Friday,  the  anniversary  of  the 
Crucifixion  of  the  Savior  of  Mankind,  that 
Lincoln  met  his  death.  It  would  seem 
as  if  somehow  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury  as  in  the  First,  there  could  be  no  re 
mission  of  the  dreadful  sin  of  slavery 
without  the  shedding  of  blood  and  the 
most  precious  blood  we  had. 

What  a  strange  suggestive  parallel!  It 
seems  no  accident  that  the  American  Lin 
coln  bore  the  Hebrew  name  of  Abraham, 
Father  of  the  Faithful  in  whose  work  for 
righteousness  all  the  nations  of  the  earth 
have  been  blessed.  It  seems  no  accident 
that  when  Lincoln  entered  the  city  of 
Richmond  near  the  close  of  his  life,  as 
Jesus  entered  the  city  of  Jerusalem  in  the 
last  week  of  his  earthly  life,  the  colored 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  77 

people  of  Richmond  were  almost  ready 
to  fall  down  and  hail  him  as  a  kind  of 
second  Messiah  to  their  race.  He  surely 
marks  one  of  the  highest  reaches  of  that 
Christian  civilization  which  the  coming  of 
the  Son  of  Man  made  possible. 

In  that  Convention  of  1864  which  re- 
nominated  Lincoln  the  long  nominating 
speeches  which  we  know  to-day  had  not 
come  into  vogue.  When  the  time  came 
for  the  presentation  of  the  names  of  can 
didates,  the  Chairman  of  the  Illinois 
Delegation  stood  up  and  without  coming 
forward,  said  this:  "The  people  of  the 
State  of  Illinois  present  to  the  people  of 
the  United  States  as  candidate  for  the 
Presidency  the  name  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
—God  bless  him!"  Then  he  sat  down. 
I  would  present  to  you  as  candidate  for 
the  place  of  highest  honor  in  the  Nine 
teenth  Century,  the  name  of  Abraham 
Lincoln — God  bless  him! 


•  OF 


TTJ 


fit 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

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Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


REC'D  LD 

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•"  '  — 

REC'D  LE 

:i-V                 •:         '.     . 

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tifoll^ 

U* 

AfK^ 

;  J  "             : 

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f?EC'DLD     DEC  ' 

r/0.?PM6? 

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T  r»  01  A    c:n     io»rn                                  General  Library         / 

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